


Maraas Shokra

by dharma22



Series: The Wardens [3]
Category: Dragon Age (Video Games), Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Cumshot, Dirty Talk, Dirty Thoughts, F/F, F/M, Multiple Orgasms, Orgasm, Other, Pining, Smut, Some struggle with emotions, The Qun (Dragon Age)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-07
Updated: 2019-12-07
Packaged: 2021-02-26 07:33:02
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,322
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21709777
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/dharma22/pseuds/dharma22
Summary: Sten wants Synathra Amell in every way. Her heart, her soul, her body, and mind. But he's content in the fact that he can't have her.Until she's right before him, offering herself to him.The Qun says there is nothing to struggle against and those words have never let him down. There is but one option: indulge and give in.
Relationships: Female Amell/Leliana (Dragon Age), Female Amell/Sten, Sten & Female Warden, Sten/Female Warden, Sten/Female Warden/Leliana, Sten/Warden
Series: The Wardens [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1499606
Kudos: 53





	Maraas Shokra

**Author's Note:**

> This was refreshing to write for some reason? I've seen stuff where Sten struggles with his feelings but like...nah. After all, the Qun says that mastering the self allows you to master the world. Besides, I love a man who isn't afraid to give in. Enjoy!

Her hair is white, like his, tinged with a touch of yellow in the light. She towers over their companions, like him, though not completely like him. She’s a good foot shorter than him, but that does not diminish her height fully. She is a fighter, like him. 

But unlike him, she is hopelessly lost in this world. She has no definite purpose in spite of being given one. Sten cannot begin to presume her thoughts, no simple man has such capabilities, but he can catch an idea by the very edge and theorize from there.

Those not born under the Qun struggle helplessly for purpose their entire lives. Through the practice of extreme patience, willpower, and near perfect understanding of the self, a few  _ basra  _ gain sight of their true purpose. Even fewer reach it. 

Synathra is no  _ basra.  _ Not anymore. At one point, he looked at her as he would any who were not his people. Once, he looked at her with disdain and confusion, sympathy pulling at his gut as he realized she was wandering aimlessly. Now, the confusion lingered, as it always would, but he saw that she was not the aimless wanderer he once thought. She is not lost because a fragment of a clue is absent from her mind. She is lost because she has all the pieces of all the clues she needs. She is overwhelmed. 

Life can be a behemoth, branching nightmare. Life can also be simple and ordained, if only one would let it be. Life is only so gigantic because people allow it to swell to an unfathomable size they can’t even begin to comprehend. Synathra, in her gratuitous attempts to allow herself the room to find her place, had granted life and all its possibilities to become too gigantic to approach, hence her lack of a definite place.

Of course, he was merely theorizing. Nothing he knew of the mage was concrete, no matter how great the desire to have just that grew. If he wasn’t so careful to check his desires, his problems would be as monstrous as Synathra’s. 

His relationship with the mage was...unintended, to say the least. In the beginning of their time traveling together, he rarely engaged with her on various principles, one of the foremost being her aptitude for magic. He did not trust mages. Mages were untamed beasts who far too unpredictable to be of any use outside of grand-scale war. Even the fights they waltzed into were no place for a mage. The numbers were often too low to mitigate a blast of energy, the quarters too cramped to effectively withstand stray magical projectiles. 

While her being a mage was never something he was certain he could forget, his distaste for her had resolved itself to be a small voice that would occasionally take his ear. Usually, the voice was so muted and monotone he didn’t listen. Sten saw that she was not this wild creature in need of a leash and whip to keep her in line. She was surprisingly rational and level-headed, rarely dominated by rage or anything other than mild amusement and annoyance. 

Countless times had her magic, simultaneously cool and warm, flooded his body to stitch back together the fibers of rent flesh, carefully eased into a solid ache to fend off the pain. There were many nights when the party was headed by her, unable to make it back to camp before their mission was completed, their energy had been sapped completely, or the journey back would have put them in needless danger, and only she could provide them the warmth and security they so needed. The common conception among his people was that mages were heralds of horrible news and bringer of bad times. There were those amongst the people here who shared that conception. But among their party, the presence of Synathra or the small kindly elder woman was a safety. He noticed and understood quite well that the dark witch, Morrigan, brought no such sense of security and protection. Sten was remarkably less fond of her, more so than anyone else. Her magic felt  _ different  _ on his skin when she cast it.

He preferred the gentle yet firm touch of Synathra’s to anyone else’s. 

When Sten discovered that she was more normal than he could’ve ever anticipated, something must’ve clicked because he noticed that the near second he peeked over his walls and down at her, she descended upon him like a ravenous vulture. At first, she would make conversation with him that would’ve made the others uncomfortable. No subject was too taboo, too risky for her. Then she began to offer things about herself, granting him the permission to pick her brain as much as she was his. 

Sten quickly realized he  _ enjoyed _ their conversations, however rare it was that they saw eye to eye. Part of traveling to a foreign country was expecting and respecting different beliefs and customs, after all. The fact that she did not agree with him on the position of mages was a technicality at this point. What galvanized his was that she bothered to ask, cared enough to ask the oxman what he thought about her kind and why he thought that way. Her opinions were made clear but there was never any indication that she was judging him for his.

There were times she’d say something and while he answered firmly and with conviction, after she returned to her tent, he returned to his with more questions that forced him to think in the abstract as opposed to the dimensional. 

Somewhere along the line, he began to seek her out. It was his turn to descend upon her like a hungry vulture.

Whatever this was, he enjoyed it more than he should have. Somewhere along the line, he no longer focused on the substance of her mind and instead became increasingly aware of the substance of her body. 

Her robes, endless in their craftsmanship and decoration, revealed far too much. Hugged her wide hips and the sinful curve of her rear, bound her long torso into submission, and forced her capacious breasts up and together. His eyes would linger on certain aspects of her body for a short while before arousal began to stir in his groin, requiring him to drag his gaze elsewhere unless he desired to have the world bear witness to his manhood. There was no concealing his erection.

When him and the boy, Alistair, sat guard together, they talked. Sten had gleaned that Alistair had much the same fascination with his lover, Ana, but felt a great deal of shame for it. His cheeks would burn an angry red, so spirited that he could spot it in the dimness. Alistair would hang his head between his hands and lament the desire that flourished within him. Sten, in all his wisdom granted via the Qun, offered concise words on the matter about how it was natural and a need, not a want, of a man to hunger for the carnal. That was all he said on the matter, no matter how hard Alistair fought him on it.

Sten was not ashamed of his desire for Synathra. He had enjoyed a great deal of nights with women, some of whom were not of his people. Should he have felt shame? Afterall, it _ was  _ a natural thing. Desire was not something exclusive to one race, one people, one culture. It endured in every sentient bodily being in this world. The Qunari taught that it had a place in the world and was not to be ignored.

The Qunari did  _ not _ teach that it had feelings adhered to it. Feelings, in any capacity, were as far removed from sex as branding irons were to the groin. The two should never mix. All his life he’d been taught that a particular attachment involved in sex was a messy thing and ultimately useless. He’d loved and cared for friends. But sex was an entirely different matter. 

So Sten struggled with his feelings for the mage. Greatly. Desire was one thing, something simple and base and understandable, but... _ this?  _ He could not put into words his calmness when with her, could not compartmentalize his overwhelming urge to sweep her up into his arms and hold her for all eternity, could not fathom the way her voice fell over him like a spell and forced him to listen intently and manage to hang onto every word she said. 

It did not matter.

Synathra belonged to the infuriatingly bubbly bard.  _ Leliana.  _ Hair like pumpkin and a voice more sweet than even Synathra’s. Deep down, he felt resentment for the bard, as she fell upon Synathra far quicker than he had, but he was grateful to her as well. Her involvement with the object of his desires meant the possibility of a chance was null. 

That did not negate his longing for the mage in any regard. Some nights, he brought himself to completion at the thought of her plump lips wrapped around him or the vision of her body grinding up against him. He was fond of those nights but recognized that those nights were ones of both weakness and something void of shame. By giving into these fantasies, he was doing as the Qun demanded. No need left unsatisfied. But...the warmth with which the fantasy possessed him was something too messy to touch and yet he stroked it firmly and relentlessly. 

Sten slung the towel over his shoulder, thoughts still preoccupied by that damned mage. A quick dip in the cold waters of the pond they used to clean themselves would do him good. Perhaps the cold would chase away the heat of memories, memories that did not exist and were wholly false. 

He parted the thick, starchy reeds that acted as privacy walls lining the pond and…

_ Vashedan. _

He nearly growls. 

Synathra sits upon a rock, back turned to him and white hair, dark with damp, plastered to her back in swirls as she pours buckets of water over her head. His eyes wander down the expanse of her back with the reverence one looks upon an idol with. 

He is frozen, mind empty yet so full. He wants to afford her privacy but he wants to stay and see  _ more. _

_ Maraas shokra. _

And so he won’t. 

He wades into the cool water, his skin prickling at the touch of the cold and the sight of her. Water parts for him, ripples out across the pond in tight circles that grow to giant ones. The sound of him sloshing about, however gentle, though Sten is _never_ gentle, disturbs her peace. She turns to look at him. Her dark eyes are piercing, they always have been, but there is no anger or hint of disruption in them. She was curious, he decides.   
Neither of them say anything and Synathra returns to washing herself. Sten decides his place should be directly parallel to her. He goes about his business, half-heartedly focusing on the task of cleaning away the grime of life and combat. His hands move about his body without any real input, their motion simple enough to not need any attention. His mind is distracted by her to control much of anything. 

Occasionally, he’ll cast a look her way, his eyes lingering and absorbing the somewhat chaste view she offered. The curve of her spine as it sloped down from the thoracic into the lumbar. The dimples in the lower back. The subtle whisper of ribs. Arousal purred in his groin.

Sten gave the rag he used to wash himself a squeeze, a cascade of soap and bubbles spilling out over his biceps and down his forearms. He wished the rag was her round rear. 

She pulled her hair over her shoulder, revealing more of her back to him. The protrusions of her spine, disappearing or announcing themselves more with every move she made, drove him mad. 

“You can touch me, Sten.”

He blinked. Had he imagined the words? Were they part of the fantasy, so real he could not separate it from reality? His hands stopped moving and his cock stiffened.

“I know you heard me. You always do,” she continued. Her voice lacked agitation and instead was full of  _ invitation _ . “I can feel your eyes on me. Like hands. Do not be afraid to come get what you want.”

No, this was very much a reality. One he could not believe, but one he could easily enjoy. 

_ Maraas shokra. _

And so he won’t.

He slowly closes the divide between them, the water only coming up to midway up his thighs, and stops when he is just behind her. His hand hand hovers over the base of her neck. Fingers itch to feels the skin there. 

_ Maraas shokra. _

And so he doesn’t.

His hands make contact, his palms gliding down her spine to feel the skin accommodate the bones beneath them. He presses himself up against her, his head bowing to inhale her scent. Seated, she was almost two heads shorter than him. He inhaled deeply. She smelled of something sweet, something he could not place.

“What is that?” he said gruffly, grinding himself against her back. His hands began to roam wildly along her back, growing evermore bold as they grazed the side of her ribcage. She gasped. “That smell,” he clarified.

“Vanilla and clove,” she breathed, resting her head against his sternum. 

He grunted in approval. 

From this vantage point, he could peer down over her head and see the front of her body. Her breasts were pleasantly round, so soft looking Sten wondered if they would dissipate in his hands if he were to touch them. His massive hands snaked around her ribcage to test his hypothesis. 

They were surprisingly firm, supple but firm, and his fingers dug into them deeply. Her lips parted as a sharp, satisfied breath escaped her. His cock twitched, the head of it nestled in the curve of her lumbar spine. 

“Will your Leliana mind?” he asked, now aware that he was potentially intruding. Though he guessed he wasn’t as much of an intrusion as he initially thought if she had instructed him to do this.

“She will not,” Synathra breathed, her left arm reaching back to wind itself around his arm, “We’ve...discussed you.”

Did they? He was surprised but pleasantly so. 

“You’ve known?” he asked.

He pinched her nipple between his thumb and forefinger, rolling the pink nub delicately at first, then a bit harsher. She whimpered and dug her fingers into his flexing bicep. 

“I-I have,” she revealed, “You’re fairly transparent when you want to be.”

He removed one hand from her breast, the other slowly sliding down her body. It felt the hard plain of her stomach, the subtle pooch of her lower belly. The empty hand moved before her face, fingers splayed.

“Do I look transparent to you?” he asked, flipping his hand over to reveal the extent of it.

She chuckled lightly. He noticed the slight cant of her hips upwards as he neared what she wanted him to touch. “It’s a figure of speech, Sten.” she said.

“I know. Stand up.”

Synathra did as told, standing to her full height, which placed her head just below his chin. Her body was solid but thin, lacking the bulk of someone accustomed to lugging around heavy arms. It was strange. He had done this with many women, felt their bodies whether they be corded with thick muscles or comprised of wiry sinew, but none had...mattered this much. He wanted to touch her flesh for ages to come, fill his senses with her, release his tension into her in a way that transcended the primal. 

His lips found their way to the place where he shoulder met her neck and pressed harsh kisses there. He continued to grind against her, her back slick with precum, as his right hand dove into the dark wiry hair of her nether and found the slickness and heat of her cunt. Synathra moaned as the rough pads of his fingers brushed against her clit. While he would eventually return to that spot, he was more concerned with coating his fingers in her slick than he was mapping the topography of her sex. To feel her heat, her wetness on his fingers...he could feel the things it did to him in his cock. 

Sten probbed the entrance of her sex, forcing a stray finger into it just to the first knuckle and promptly removing it once he saw how she responded. She enjoyed it too much.

He nipped at her pulse, causing her to cry out. Both her arms were tucked behind her and feeling for his cock. They struggled blindly to find it at first, but when they did, Sten hissed. Her hands were the perfect size, perfect texture to grasp him firmly. 

“Maker’s breath, Sten,” she whimpered.

“What?” he questioned, wondering if he’d done something wrong.

“The sheer  _ girth _ on that thing…” she moaned, her fingers dragging up and down the slit of his cock.

Sten kept the smirk to himself. 

Once his fingers were sufficiently sticky and he’d gained enough satisfaction from playing in her mess, he drew a tight circle around her clit. Just enough stimulation to excite her, too little directness to give her what she wanted. Synathra, with her cool and collected manner, was rarely without power and control over a situation. Sten would show her  _ he  _ was the one who held that power.

His tongue ran along the stretched muscle in her neck, her flesh tasting of water and warmth, as his fingers worked her slowly. He would not rush the perfection he’d built up in his mind. Afterall, Sten was not confident he would be granted many more chances like this to explore her, play with her, tease her. He planned to take full advantage of her invitation to touch her. The free hand of his fondled her breast, tugging roughly at the pebbled nipple and wishing he could roll it between his teeth. 

The bucking of her hips was subtle at first, a slow rhythmic press against his hand that was barely noticeable. But then she grew bold, too bold, and actively sought out a completion at his hands. That would not do. She would not come undone until he said so, until he was primed and ready to feel the pulses of her sex around his fingers as it reached the threshold of tolerance for his touch. 

“Still yourself,” he commanded, his voice a sharp growl in her ear.

Shame on him for thinking pure words could reign her in. He might as well have not said anything at all, for her hips picked up their pace, frantically chasing an orgasm with abandon. Both hands deserted their previous duties and held her hips securely to stop their motion. At the loss of his touch and the stilling of her hips, she cried out and released his cock. Sten was hardly even aware of the pleasure in his groin until she stopped.

“I said  _ stop, _ ” he grunted.

The stillness and lack of stimulation allowed her to catch her breath, regain her head from up amongst the clouds. Her eyes were closed. Her lashes were dark and heavy against the paleness of her skin, fluttering gently upon the paleness like mysterious butterflies. The turbulent, hurried rise and fall of her chest stirred something new in him. He wanted to limit the intake and output of her breath, make it so he was also in control of that just as much as he was in control of her pleasure. 

His hand, the color of pale ash and stitched with silvery scars, is a stark contrast to her snowy, unblemished skin. It creeps up her chest, feels the solid place between her breasts and detects the hollowness of her ribcage, to grasp her throat. He squeezes gently, enough to restrict her airway  _ just  _ enough. 

Her eyes shoot open, momentarily panicked before complacency and arousal sink into their depths. A hand, much smaller than his own, grips his wrist. It is not request to relinquish. Giving her the ability to touch, to feel the tendons moving beneath the skin pulling at his fingers, shaping his palm to her throat, makes it real, he thinks. For being a mage, she has a strange fondness of the tangible. 

Synathra’s head lulls back against him once more, her lips pressing kisses to the underside of his jaw and occasionally mouthing requests.

_ Touch me, touch me. _

He gave into her demands and returned to her clit, this time providing direct touches instead of the teases he previously offered. Her clit was hard beneath the pad of his fingers. He wanted to wrap his lips around the bundle of nerves and suck until she was screaming. 

Moans of varying volume filled his ears. They urged him to stroke harder, faster, softer, slower. But he did not listen. He set his own pace and stuck with it. 

Suddenly, her body stiffened, taut like strained rope, and he knew. At her insistence, the hand around her throat squeezed tighter and  _ that  _ sent her spiraling over her edge. He removed his fingers from her clit and plunged two thick fingers inside her, feeling the muscles there spasm wildly as she came. 

A high-pitched moan escaped through his vice-like grip. At the sound of it, his cock twitched and he spilled himself all over her back. Pleasure burst like a barrel of unstable gaatlok. His seed came out in thick, hot ropes, painting her back in hasty strokes. He likened the view to that of the strangest paintings amongst his collection. The strokes were nonsensical and uneven, just like the splatter across her back.

When her walls no longer milked his fingers, resolving to infrequent and weak pulses, her withdrew his fingers and brought the soaked digits to her mouth. She caught on instantly, welcoming his fingers into her mouth as if it were second nature. Her tongue rolled around the intrusion, tasting her own mess with vigor. She groaned and his cock twitched to life once more before it could begin to soften.

He released his hold on her throat entirely and began the task of cleaning her back. Cold water was dumped by the handful down her back, evidence of the prior moments washing away. Sten was satisfied, his curiosity and imagination fulfilled. He had already committed the act to memory. He did not intend on saying anything — there was no need, as there were no words for what just transpired and talking created room for unpleasant corners to be backed into — and was about to wade back over to his side of the pond when Synathra pounced on him. Her lips toppled over his, tongue pressing past the seal of his lips to invade his mouth. 

Few things surprised him. He was a rather perceptive man, one who caught wind of things long before they happened and was as unbothered by the unexpected as a mossy rock in the elements. But  _ this  _ continuation of what had been started and concluded...it rocked him to his core. 

His brawny arms wound themselves around her, encasing her in his enormous bulk, and refusing to let her go. It was a reflex almost. Sten returned the kiss, his tongue as equally brazen and demanding as hers. Synathra pulled back from the kiss, hollow cheeks flushed a vibrant red, and her dark eyes didn’t seem so dark anymore. This close, Sten could see the warmth of the brown, the thin ring of a brown so light he imagined it to be the color of the caramel Ana talked about at great length. There was reciprocation in their warm depths. Acceptance of the truth tangible between them and having just been acted out. There was arousal, yes, but there was also a soul baring vulnerability that he felt reflected in himself.

“Take me, Sten,” she breathed.

“I just did.”

“Andraste’s favorite raw  _ cock,  _ Sten, do I need to spell it out for you?” she chastised, lightly punching his chest. Her brow creased in her usual annoyance.

He was well aware that he could take things quite literally and miss the point entirely ( _ Vashedan,  _ the people here spoke in such heavy metaphors that Sten was driven to sheer madness), but the lesser known side of him, one she was well aware of, was that he knew a great deal more than he let on. Unique in occurrence, but present all the same was his ability to fully convince the people around him that he was a stupid, stubborn oxman with nothing but the Qun rattling around in his head. The Qun taught many things. While there was no official decree woven into the platitudes of simplicity and roles in the Qun, the Qunari as a people were known to appreciate a small enough tease that it went unrecognized. Sten attributed that in some part to the Qun

“Sten, please,” she begged, cradling his cheek with the utmost tenderness.

In his mullings over the Qun, he had not realized that she awaited a response. His silence came off as if the request was a difficult one to fulfill, one that required great thought as to whether or not he acted upon it. That couldn’t have been farther from the truth. He would oblige, had wanted to oblige for weeks now, and would do so without a second thought.

Although it was baffling that she assumed he had another orgasm in him. From all accounts he’d heard, human men were notorious for spending themselves far too early and giving up the second it happened. He wasn’t privy to her sexual history, he’d never thought to ask as he didn’t really care, but she was well-versed on bodies of various races. 

“You think I can?” he stoically teased, raising a brow.

She rolled her eyes, her hand dropping from his chin to his groin. She gripped his cock, already hard and straining against her belly. He hadn’t even noticed.

“Please, I wasn’t born yesterday. I  _ know  _ what an eager cock feels like and you’ve had one since the beginning, even after you made a mess with it,” she disclosed, giving his cock a hard tug. The feel of it caused him to inhale sharply. 

Synathra stroked him for a time, her touch not as hard as the first stroke, rather a ghost of a touch that drove him mad. Was she purposely inciting him to madness? Was it her plan to drive him to the brink until he forced himself inside her and took her like the violent oxman he was supposed to be? 

It was working, if so.

“Bend over,” he commanded, pushing away the hand working him and guiding her to a position over the rock she sat on previously. She braced herself against the rock, her rear exposed to him and ripe for the taking. His hands explored the expanse of her cheeks, milky and marked by a solitary mole. He spread her wide, drank in the sight of her glistening and greedy cunt, and a string of precum spilled from the tip of his cock.

His thumbs spread the delicate lips of her sex, further exposing the sweetness of her. A growl rumbled in his chest at the sight. The mage looked back at him with such interest and care that it almost felt wrong to have his thoughts be so thoroughly tainted by the sensuous.

“What are you looking at?” he barked. The question was mainly rhetorical but he was also quite curious as to what purpose it served for her to bare witness to his face. All that she needed was being poured into her flesh.

“You,” she hummed, “I want to see your face as you make love to me.”

He frowned, not understanding her interest in it. “Why?” he asked skeptically.

A massive grin spanning the entire width of the space between her ears split her face. Her teeth were pearly and straight, pressed so neatly against one another that the uniformity of it was slightly eye-crossing, and Sten wondered when she had the time to care for them so well. Atop her cheekbones sat a soft blush. “You didn’t deny it,” she whispered.

At first, he was puzzled at what it was he was supposed to be denying. But then it hit him. 

_ As you make love to me.  _

Sten had heard the words, had felt a sense of complacency with it, but had never really acknowledged what it meant. Love was not the word at the tip of his tongue, scratching at the confines of his mouth to get out, but when she said it, perhaps it  _ was  _ the word. He just didn’t know it. 

He knew it now and strangely enough, he felt as if he were chafing underneath it. 

‘Love’ was not as foreign a concept as people thought to the Qunari people. Friends maintained strong, unbreakable bonds their entire lives, some Tamassrans inevitably fell into a gaping hole of love for the children they cared for. Sten had grown fond of a woman long ago, one he dared say planted a seed that could’ve blossomed into love had it been nurtured and tended well. What he felt for Synathra was similar to that but vastly different.

Qunari did not mix love and sex though. All his decades on this earth, Sten had associated the infusion of love with sex to be a definite way to have onself reeducated. Yet what he felt for the mage, this  _ love,  _ was overpowering and here he was, about to take the plunge into her body, the love he felt for her palpable. Clearly, she felt the same. 

Now that she had drawn attention not only to her use of the word, but to his acceptance of it, Sten grew unsure. He hesitated and he felt shame. A Qunari  _ never  _ hesitated. Hesitance authorized struggle and…

_ Maraas shokra. _

Synathra’s face fell at his silence. She moved, propped herself up on her hands. “I’m sorry, I did not mean to-” she began but her words were lost.

Sten grabbed her hips, aligned himself with her entrance, and pulled her back against him. He sheathed himself in her completely, her heat encasing him, molding around him, and  _ squeezing. _

Her mouth fell open in a lengthy moan, the sound spilling out like a too full vessel of water. He groaned.

“My people have no such concept of ‘making love,’” he maintained, hips thrusting violently into her core, “I do not need to fuck a woman for her to know I love her. It is unbecoming. But this…” His words trailed off as the feeling of her cunt rippling along his length nestled into his chest and he lacked the vocabulary to explain.

Synathra was momentarily captivated by pleasure, her eyes tightly shut off to the world, and her lips forming an ‘o’. Her body rocked with the force of his thrusts, each plunge into her disturbing the water. 

“Isn’t wrong?” she offered, “You want this?”

He remained silent, the particularly violent thrust of his hips more of an answer than he could ever give. Her head fell back to let out the borderline scream bubbling up in her chest. Her eyes split open to reveal darkened eyes, their newfound warmth still present but in a decidedly lesser quantity. The pupils had consumed much of it. 

“That’s okay, you don’t have to answer. Your silence speaks volumes,” she said, voice airy and heavy at the same time, “I know what this is, even if you don’t.”

Synathra pulled away from him, his cock slipping from the warmth of her cunt to greet the chilly air of the world. Her slick added to the stark contrast of temperature. Having spent some time in the velvety heat of her sex, it felt wrong to be anywhere but buried in her whil still hard. He did not have to wait long to return, for she turned herself around completely and took his lips with hers once more, her hand snaking between their bodies to guide his cock back into her. They groaned in unison. 

Her toned leg wound itself around his hips, granting him more ease with access. But it wasn’t enough. He hooked his strong arms under both her thighs and lifted her, her legs dangling over his arms as he supported her weight entirely. The task was an easy one. She weighed hardly anything, at least not anything he couldn’t handle. With his hips freed, her cunt opening up more so than before, he took up a steady pace once more. 

“I love you, Sten,” she whispered against his lips, her breath hot against his wet and bruised lips. 

He nearly came then, not from the perfect grip of her cunt around him, but from the delicate wobble in her voice. The soprano lilt to her words that conveyed to him how true they were. 

Sten felt much the same but he could not express that. The words fit perfectly, just like his hips did against the robust curve of her rear, but his voice could not find the sounds to say it. 

So he didn’t.

But like she said, she knew. And with every deep-seated pound of his hips, she became more aware of it. 

“Maker but you’re big,” Synathra whined, lacing her fingers around the back of his neck, “It feels like you’re in my fucking chest, filling my hips.”

He closed his eyes, trying to find a thread that he could grasp to hold on to for a bit longer. This would only buy him a few minutes. 

“Your cock is beating up against my cervix like it’s too loud on the other side and knocking forcefully will quiet it,” she continued.

A guttural moan leapt up from his chest and into the air. Synathra laughed.

“You like that word? Cervix?” she strung out, fingers tracing patterns on his neck.

He miscalculated how long he could hold out. He had not anticipated the sound of that  _ word,  _ meaningless to him but so undeniably primal, and the tingling at the base of his cock informed him it would be his undoing.

“My  _ cervix  _ will feel you for days,” she purred through pants.

He snarled. “ _ Vashedan! What does it  _ mean?” he forcibly requested with another sharp thrust of his hips.

The mage cried out into his ear, her arms encasing his neck as she held on for dear life. “It’s the...n-neck...of my womb,” she managed to scrape out, too focused on accommodating his length and girth. 

Common was interesting like that. 

“Cervix…” he hissed, trying out the word in his mouth before laying her down on the rock and plunging into her cunt at a new angle. Her toes curled.

“ _ Yes, _ ” she mewled, throwing her legs over his vast shoulders, “You keep hitting it. But you like hitting it, no? Big Qunari man, pounding some little  _ basra’s  _ cunt like he hates it.”

Sten roared and clamped his hand down over her mouth, ending her string of mindless filth. Ending it did little to staunch the effect those words had on him. His thrusts were no longer ruthless and precise. They became erratic and uncertain in their longevity. The new pace was set to delay the inevitable.

“Quiet!” he exploded and her eyes, instead of widening with fear and submission, lit up and crinkled at the corners. 

Her hands made quick work of detaching his hand from her mouth, not that he had a strong enough hold on it anyways. Her lips were carved into a cunning, taunting smirk. “You’re close,” she proposed, rolling her hips against his now still ones and wincing as his cock hit the perfect spot, “You don’t want me to stop, you want me to fill your ears with filth. You want to know what your cock is doing to me because you’re greedy. Feeling it wasn’t enough?”

“There is no room for greed in the Qun,” Sten insisted, withdrawing completely to slam back in fully. She cried out.

“J-Just like there’s no room for love?” she queried. 

Her spine arched into him, her perky breasts crushing against him as her body went taut as a bowstring and snapped just as powerfully as one. Around his cock, her muscles pulsed and milked him. His brow furrowed, his eyes squeezed shut, his lip curled as he tried to fight off his orgasm. 

“What sort of miserable existence do you think my people lead with your nonsense about Qunari not knowing love?” he spat through clenched teeth. It was easy to mistake his question to be one borne of anger, but he was more curious than outraged. Her comment made no sense and he attributed it to ignorance. They had not touched on Qunari relationships much outside of the lack of a familial unit. 

Her entire body spasmed with the power of her orgasm and she writhed like an agitated worm for a second. He ground his hips into her, stimulating her clit so well that he was certain she was on the verge of tears. 

“The Qun says that love has no place in activities such as these,” Sten scolded, squeezing her thighs, “But is every Andrastian a strict adherent to the word of...the light book?”

Synathra began to calm, as much as she possibly could with Sten’s faltering thrusts, and her eyes opened once more. They locked onto his as he went about extracting his pleasure. 

“Chant of Light,” she corrected him. 

He did not deem her correction worthy of acknowledgment. Sparing the words was just not possible. At the base of his cock there was a mind-numbing tingle, slowly working its way up to the tip of him. But the journey was an agonizing one. His patience was a phenomenal thing for the most part, only ever worn on by acts of heinous ignorance, but it was quickly wearing thin. He wanted to come  _ now. _

The mage must’ve sensed it in how his brow held a deep crease and his features contorted in discomfort. She propped herself up on her elbows. Lips parted, sealed shut, and parted once more. She was unsure. Then she wasn’t.

“Come for me, Sten,” she begged, “Spill your seed all over my  _ cervix. _ ”

With one last powerful thrust and a bellowing roar that surely their companions heard and potentially shook the world, Sten came undone at that fucking word. He did as she asked, his cock pulsating at a rate he couldn’t keep straight, and filling her full of his seed. It was bliss in its truest, unadulterated form. The orgasm felt as if it were going on for hours, but when he calmed, he felt as if it had gone too suddenly. 

He would’ve mourned the loss of such a powerful orgasm if not for the angry exhaustion setting in. He could manage a few orgasms before being totally spent, but that was at peak performance and he had not lain with a woman for many months. 

Sten retreated from her velvety depths, milky white seed spilling out the second he had fully removed himself. The sight aroused him beyond belief, however his cock only gave a subtle twitch and that was the extent of his excitement. Synathra sat up and shivered as more of his come trickled out of her. He could see the gooseflesh prickling at her skin. He wished he could drape something over her shoulders. They say nothing as they clean themselves up and Sten decides its a nice quiet. They did not need to say anything to know what just happened. Afterall, it was fairly obvious and enough had been said during it all that saying something now might snap the precious string of contentment. 

When Sten has washed away the stickiness coating his grown and turns to trudge back to his side of the pond, he feels a gentle hand at his elbow. He stops but does not face her.

“I want you to stay in my tent,” she tells him.

“You have your bard,” he counters.

He can hear her huff. “I want you both,” she admits.

He supposes the answer is satisfactory enough. 

-+-

The night air is cool on his bare forearms, hinting at the fact that summer was about to fall away to make room for fall. Behind him, the fire crackles softly, its warmth rolling along his back. The tent before him is unremarkable, he can see that, but just beyond it lies something he can barely comprehend the general shape of, let alone the marvelous details.

But it is better to not get caught up in them anyways. 

The flap to the tent is pushed aside and the pleasant warmth he emerges into is nice. He wasn’t aware of how cold it was outside when he was in the tent. 

His eyes darted around to everything but the two women cocooned in blankets. He saw Synathra’s staff of white steel glistening in the light from the lantern suspended in air by magic. He saw the crystal bottles of transparent pastels filled with oils, both scented and purposeful, and waters for the skin. The floor was littered with rugs of various designs. It looked like a small home and he felt like an intrusion. 

Finally, his eyes landed on the two women in the center eyeing him curiously. Synathra smiled and reached for him. As if in a daze, he went to her, fell to his knees, and kissed her firmly. Upon her lips was the trace of something sweet. 

“I’m glad you came,” she beamed, her fingers coming to rest on his cheek. Leliana’s face appeared just over her shoulder, a soft smile on her lips.

“I didn’t think you would,” the bard admitted.

He snorted. “I can leave,” he notified.

“But you won’t.” Synathra affirmed. 

And she was right. Sten never went back on his decisions, standing firmly by them even if things soured. In truth, coming to their tent, sharing Synathra if only to have a piece of her was not a difficult decision to make. He was where he was and no lingering sense of doubt would change that.

They chatted for some time, Sten remaining fairly quiet and only adding his voice to the mix when a topic piqued his interest. The longer they spoke, the more at ease Sten felt. He felt as if...he had a place here, in this tent, in Synathra’s life. The three of them had many things to discuss, whether it be in the morning or days later, but for now, that did not matter. The blurred lines as to how  _ this _ would play out was of little consequence in the moment. They were enjoying themselves. There was more than enough time to iron out the details into smooth, even things instead of the bumpy and rough things they were currently. 

When words began to slow and slur, Leliana pulled the lantern down from the space above them and blew out the flame. Synathra and the bard settled into their nest of blankets. But Sten sat over them and watched. He was not sure what to do.

Until the mage rolled over and traced a pattern onto his knee. She smiled up at him. It was unusual to see her smile so much. “What’s wrong?” she asked.

“Nothing is wrong,” he said.

She patted the spot beside her. “Then lie down.” she commanded.

He did as she asked, removing his thin shirt and slipping in at her side beneath the blankets. His arms wrapped around her, pulled her closer to his chest. “Is this what you wanted?” he questioned.

“Is this what  _ you  _ wanted?”

He blinks. “Yes.” he finally answered.

It was. 

  
  
  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Translations:  
> baras - non-Qunari, typically a slur  
> Maraas shokra - "There is nothing to struggle against"


End file.
